Installation

Install the bluez package which contains the current Linux bluetooth stack (Bluez5). You may also want to install bluez-utils which contains development and debugging tools for the Bluez stack. See Bluetooth for more information.

If you would prefer to configure bluetooth through the older Bluez4 stack then install the bluez4AUR package from the AUR. Please consult the Bluez4 article for more information.

Warning: Bluez4 has been deprecated. It is strongly recommended that you use Bluez5 instead.

Note: The above instructions to start the mouse at startup do not work with the now outdated 3.11 bluetooth packages. New versions such as the current (3.32) packages are not affected. If you are using an older version, then to start the mouse at startup, add:

Note #2: You can connect any bluetooth mouse and/or keyboard without any further configuration and without knowing the device address. You can do it by adding the --master and/or --server option in HIDD_OPTIONS depending on your device.

Troubleshooting

Mouse lag

If you experience mouse lag you can try to increase the polling rate. There is a wiki article describing the procedure: Mouse Polling Rate.

Problems with the USB dongle

If you have trouble with your USB dongle, you may also want to try

# modprobe -v rfcomm

At this point, you should get an hci0 device with

# hcitool dev

Sometimes the device is not active right away - try starting the interface with